If the plan does not pay, what then? only a part of the money can be lost; and to have given that to an hospital or an almshouse would have been called praiseworthy and Christian charity; how much more to have spent it not in the cure, but in the prevention of evil -- in making almshouses less needful, and lessening the number of candidates for the hospital!

While acknowledging that the work is a modern one, and describing as "praiseworthy" the city of Rome's initiative to erect the tribute, the Vatican said "the statue's sin" is that it is "hardly able to be recognized."